We must become mechanics; we must build as well as live in houses; we must make as well as use furniture; we must construct bridges as well as pass over them, before we can properly live or be respected by our fellow men.
Douglass emphasizes the importance of Black Americans engaging in skilled trades and manufacturing to gain respect and achieve full participation in society.
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More from Frederick Douglass
We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren.
The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned were flung in the balance and weighed against each other.
The anti-slavery platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.
We could not but believe that there existed at the South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert itself at last.